BIKEWAYS, a health and fitness centre, regular medical specialist visits, a medical hub, including at least two doctors and a dentist, full-time maternity care, a rural health training centre, an operating theatre – there was no shortage of ideas when Hughenden residents were asked how community health needs could be met by 2020.
In a forum hosted by Townsville-Mackay Medicare Local (TMML) Program Coordinator Colin McPherson and Program Executive Manager Rhonda Fleming, the 16 attendees at the Hughenden meeting were told to put their healthcare requests on paper and to broaden their horizons with their ideas.
While plenty of gaps were pointed out by the group in the first question of the night, ‘what are the gaps in the healthcare system?’, the second question, “In 2020, what will healthcare look like?’, was the chance for the community to show how the current problems could be solved.
Mr McPherson said this was the first of a number of community consultations he would be holding in this region and was impressed with the turn-out, enthusiasm and range of people represented at the meeting, which included the principals of both Hughenden schools (St Francis and Hughenden State School), a number of Flinders Shire Council staff members, Mayor Greg Jones, councillors Barbara Geisler, Jane Charuba, Shane McCarthy and Bill Bode, as well as the Hughenden Health Centre Director of Nursing and other members of the public.
In 2011, the Australian Government established new organisations, Medicare Locals, to plan and fund extra health services in communities across Australia.
To ensure decisions about health services could be made by local communities in line with local needs, Medicare Locals were created as local organisations, 61 of them Australia-wide.
The Australian Government is investing more than $1.8 billion so Medicare Locals can coordinate and deliver important health services including after-hours GP services, immunisation, mental health support, targeted and tailored services for those in need, and eHealth.
Medicare Locals employ more than 3,000 frontline health workers to deliver services in communities across the nation. Medicare Locals have flexibility to be innovative in how they respond to the needs of their communities.
A report will be prepared documenting outcomes from the meeting, which ran for more than two hours at the Diggers Entertainment Centre on Monday October 28, and this will be made available to community members via the Medicare Local website.
Medicare Local also prepares a Needs Assessment Report for the government and includes outcomes from community consultation in this document.
